HubSpot is by far the number one choice for inbound marketing. But is the market leader the right tool for your company, or do you have other requirements that you can cover better with other solutions? We’ll show you what HubSpot pricing is, what marketing automation features you get for it, and what the best HubSpot alternatives are.
What marketing automation features do you get with HubSpot pricing?
The main areas are divided into so-called hubs and bundle different function packages:
- Marketing Hub
- Sales Hub
- Service Hub
- CMS Hub
- Operation Hub
Their features quickly show that HubSpot is a tool for large companies that have complex and high demands. That’s why the software is also full of useful features, but not every company needs them in equal parts, thus justifying HubSpot’s rather high cost.
Marketing automation is the automation of repetitive tasks in online marketing for more efficient marketing and a more personalized experience for the customer. Check out our post on Marketing Automation for more on the topic and the alternative to HubSpot pricing. Marketing Automation is also big at HubSpot and hides in the Marketing Hub. You can automate the following:
From the free version
- Send up to 2000 emails per month
- Automate emails (1 action)
- Form automation (1 automated email per form)
- Create landing pages
- Segmentation of contacts
- User management
From Professional
- Omni-channel marketing automation via workflow (up to 3000 workflows)
- ABM automation
- A/B tests
- Standard lead scoring(What is lead scoring?)
- Dynamic Content(What is Dynamic Content?)
With the free version, you can already get a taste of automation and familiarize yourself with the topic. It gets really exciting starting with the Pro version. That’s where you can start building automated workflows to automatically process a contact and nurture leads. But at the relatively high HubSpot prices:
HubSpot Pricing for Marketing Automation
If you just want to test things out a bit, HubSpot already gives you solid options in the free version of Marketing Hub. However, if you want to test Marketing Automation properly for your business, then you need to skip the low-cost Starter version and go straight to Professional, and that’s a big jump in terms of cost:
| Payment method | Free | Starter / year | Professional / year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Per month (for 1 year) | CHF 0 | CHF 552 | CHF 9’876 |
| At once for the year | CHF 0 | CHF 497 | CHF 8’880 |
| Onboarding (one-time) | Not available | Not available | CHF 2’760 |
*Status of information: January 2023
With HubSpot, you always have to commit for 1 year, but you have the option to pay HubSpot prices monthly, or directly pay everything at once for the whole year. Then you get a 10% discount. Once you choose Professional, an onboarding fee of EUR 2’760 is added. There, you’ll be introduced to the software by a HubSpot representative, including tips and tricks on how to properly set up your environment.
Do contacts cost extra?
Professional costs 23 times more than the Starter version for new customers in the first year. And if you’re seriously considering marketing automation for your business, you can’t avoid the more expensive option if you want to use Hubspot as your software. Now, it’s still important to understand that you’re not only paying for the software and onboarding, but also for the contacts you can manage in HubSpot. A distinction is made between marketing contacts and normal contacts. Normal contacts you can add up to 15’000’000, as soon as you want to approach contacts via HubSpot (marketing contacts), it will cost you extra.
The big difference between Starter and Professional here is the jump. In Starter you jump in steps of 1’000 and in Professional in steps of 5’000. This table shows the differences in HubSpot costs even better:
| Number of marketing contacts | Starter: Total costs (per year) in CHF | Professional: Total costs (per year) in CHF |
|---|---|---|
| 1’000 | 497 | – |
| 2’000 | 994 | 8’880 |
| 3’000 | 1’490 | – |
| 4’000 | 1’933 | – |
| 5’000 | 2’376 | – |
| 6’000 | 2’765 | – |
| 7’000 | 3’154 | 11’361 |
| 8’000 | 3’542 | – |
| 9’000 | 3’931 | – |
| 10’000 | 4’320 | – |
| 12’000 | 5’098 | 13’842 |
| 13’000 | 5’486 | – |
| 14’000 | 5’875 | – |
| 15’000 | 6’264 | – |
| 16’000 | 6’653 | – |
| 17’000 | 7’042 | 16’323 |
*Status of information: January 2023
It is also important to note that if you have always used the free version so far, the contacts will be counted as soon as you switch to a paid version. For example, if you regularly send emails to 10,000 contacts and switch to Professional, you’ll have to pay CHF 16,602 in HubSpot pricing for the first year and CHF 13,842 for all subsequent years. Provided that your contact list has not grown over 12’000 in this period.
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What are the HubSpot alternatives, at lower prices?
HubSpot is a good, solid solution for marketing automation and helps move the business forward. However, it is not necessarily the ideal solution for every company or application area. That’s why we want to introduce you to two also very good alternatives to HubSpot Marketing. Again, we make sure to focus primarily on marketing automation, not comparing the complete package to HubSpot’s higher costs.
1. aivie
The marketing automation tool Aivie is based on the open source tool Mautic, but has been greatly enhanced, with new features, a new look and more user-friendly operation. Aivie was born out of the idea of providing a more cost-effective, highly customizable, and privacy-friendly alternative to HubSpot. An alternative where the data remains under the sovereignty of the companies.
What makes Aivie special is not only the tool itself, but also the additional service packages that you can buy if you need them. Aivie’s team helps you personally increase your chances of success with workshops, ready-to-use use case packages and other flat-rate services.
All this makes Aivie more personal compared to the competition, which relies entirely on tutorials and in-tool templates.
Detailed comparison of Aivie and HubSpot
2. activeCampaign
ActiveCampaign has been doing marketing automation at a high level since 2003. With ActiveCampaign, you have a tool that relies a lot on artificial intelligence and provides predictive tips about your Campaign. ActiveCampaign shines with the many different integrations that are possible with this tool. This gives you great flexibility with integrations from existing marketing tools.
Features compared to HubSpot prices
| Feature | Aivie Pro (10,000 contacts) | HubSpot Marketing Professional (10,000 contacts) | ActiveCampaign Professional (10,000 contacts) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of users | Unrestricted | Unrestricted | 5 |
| No setup costs | ✅ | ✅ | |
| Free onboarding call | ✅ | ||
| Automated campaigns | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Automated surveys | ✅ | ✅ | |
| E-Mail marketing | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Personalised newsletters | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| E-Mail Builder | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Standard templates in your CI | ✅ | ||
| Dashboard and Analytics | ✅ | ✅ limited | ✅ |
| Website tracking | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Hosting | CH, DE or On-Premise | US or DE | US |
| Lead scoring | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Automatic segmentation | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Automatic tag assignment | ✅ | ||
| UTM Tag Tracking | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Contact Management (CRM) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Full data sovereignty | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| 360° Customer View | ✅ | ✅ | |
| DSGVO compliant | ✅ | ✅ | |
| Form Automation | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Landing page builder | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Dynamic Content | ✅ | ✅ | |
| A/B testing | ✅ | ✅ | |
| Own domain | ✅ | ✅ | |
| Workshops (charged extra) | ✅ | ||
| Service Marketplace | ✅ | ✅ | |
| Quickstarter packages (charged extra) | ✅ | ||
| Growth Services (charged extra) | ✅ | ||
| On Demand Services (charged extra) | ✅ | ||
| Costs in the first year | CHF 4,620 (DE) | CHF 16’602 | CHF 3,966.60 |
*Status of information: January 2023
What customers who have switched to Aivie say
We moved from HubSpot and now have lower costs, less effort and, with Aivie, a partner that doesn’t hide its services behind a paywall. We also appreciate the excellent support.
Daniel B.
IT
Both the tool and the service are excellent. I particularly appreciate the fast response and data security, as all data is stored in Switzerland. The prices are very reasonable. Would recommend this service to others!
Hannes B.
CEO
We have been working with Aivie as a marketing automation service for years. It is the clear number one in the areas of marketing automation and marketing strategy, and also offers by far the best price-performance ratio!
Felix C.
CMO
Why is Mailchimp not listed as an alternative?
Mailchimp is a powerful email marketing tool. But marketing automation goes much further than just email marketing. Marketing Automation aims to automate and simplify various marketing tasks. To do this, you need a tool with cross-channel functions and the ability to use an editor to automate logical processes based on countless attributes and information. So email marketing is a part of marketing automation and that’s why we didn’t include Mailchimp as an alternative to HubSpot pricing.
Summary
HubSpot is a deserved leader in inbound marketing tools. However, is your requirement only on Marketing Automation and you want to integrate your existing tools or you are not willing to pay such a high amount?
Then there are good alternatives to cost with HubSpot for your business to optimize your marketing. Our comparison list also gives you an overview of the features that a good tool must have so that you can successfully and meaningfully automate prices without Hubspot. Have fun evaluating your tool.
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And launch into your Marketing Automation Journey.
